


Waiting For Alice

by thawrecka



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-02-20
Updated: 2004-02-20
Packaged: 2017-11-20 04:24:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/581271
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thawrecka/pseuds/thawrecka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is not afraid. She is not bothered. It is not real.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waiting For Alice

**Author's Note:**

> For the Darla ficathon. I've only just seen 5.02 so this goes AU directly after that. Quotes from and refers to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

In the in-between moments, cold and hopeless, they cling to each other. Spike flickers in and out at random intervals -- in the middle of a sentence or halfway through a movement. Darla is indispensable to him now, a familiar face in amongst the horrors of this place.

It is not warm in this place he goes to and she is the only warmth he will get. Down there he can touch, hold, and feel. He grasps her hand in his and feels its weight. She is soft, smooth and light and he worries he might crush her.

Spike never knows when he is going to find himself in this place, when reality is going to flicker away around him, but it always does eventually. He doesn't tell Angel what's down here (as if he would).

He was down here for what felt like days before he found Darla the first time. He'd been wandering around in a formless daze, secretly terrified, when he came across her. She was bright and beautiful, a shining blonde beacon in the dim surroundings. He'd been so happy to see a familiar face that he'd put aside any and all animosity he held towards her, before approaching carefully.

"Hello," he'd said, cautiously and she'd said, "Welcome, Spike. I'm surprised it took you this long to turn up here."

Her smile was strangely blunt, like someone had filed the sharp edges off.

"What is this place?" he'd asked.

"Can't you guess?" she'd replied, enigmatically, and continued smiling. "Where else would we go?"

They'd stood there in silence for an interminable length of time.

Finally, a thought came to Spike's head and he began to speak. "Where's..."

But he didn't get to finish because that place began to fade out and the real world began to fade in.

 

The second time she saw him was almost as unremarkable as the first. She could sense him nearing from a mile off. Even in death he was as loud and uncouth as ever.

When he came close enough to see her, with his un-focused and un-practised eyes, he said, "You again."

"Yes," she said, simple.

"I feel like I've been walking for days," he said. "I didn't think I'd find anything."

"Maybe you have been walking for days," she said.

He looked at her quizzically. Spike had always been hasty and unthinking in that way.

"That doesn't make any bloody sense. They told me I only disappear for a couple minutes or less," he said.

Really, he was so unimaginative.

"Time moves differently here, when it moves at all," Darla explained. "You are quite dead, so what does time matter."

"It matters," Spike said, his heart still stuck on the physical plane. "It just bleeding matters."

She simply smiled at him, like the Cheshire cat, and said not a word.

Within time he edged closer to her, curious yet careful. He poked at her shoulder, wide-eyed at finding someone he could touch. He ran his fingers over her hair, face and neck.

Looking up into her face Spike asked, "Why are we here?" and faded.

 

Of course he returned. He had no choice. This place grabbed him by the arms and pulled him to it. Within its grip he felt he was powerless to resist.

"It's not fair," he yelled. The shifting landscape echoed his pointless words.

"Nothing is fair," it seemed to answer, pounding inside his head.

Darla was somewhere. He came across her somehow. It was all starting to melt inside his head.

He grabbed her by the arms and looked straight into her murky eyes.

"Why am I here?" he demanded to know. "I did a good thing. I saved people. Why am I here?"

"One good deed is not enough to redeem a life of wickedness," she spoke, calm and infuriating.

"It's not fair."

At this she laughed, and her laughter ran loud and spiteful all around him. She wouldn't stop, even when he shook her.

"You're mad!" he exclaimed.

"We're all mad here," she said.

She only stopped laughing when he grasped her hair and kissed her. She was pliant, then, and he wondered how long she must have been there to have given in to the madness so very much. As he continued to kiss her the world seemed to wash away to the back of his consciousness. He almost felt like he wasn't being ripped apart.

The misdeed rolled over them like a flood.

When he found himself back in the world he headed straight for Angel's bedroom and waited, secretly.

 

"Maybe if I'm lucky they'll let me out for good behaviour."

"Oh no. When this place has its hooks all the way inside you it won't let you go," she replied, saddened by this thought.

"It hasn't been able to keep me yet," he said.

"Not yet, but soon."

They sat next to each other, his head against her shoulder and his hand wrapped around her wrist. He seemed to want to make the most of skin contact, in this place where he could feel it.

"So you never got out of here, not even for a moment?" he asked, as his fingers started tracing crazy circles all over her arm.

"Just once," she replied. "To see a boy."

"What happened?"

"The queen said, 'Off with her head' and there was nothing I could do."

"Does Angel know?"

"Would you tell him?"

Spike snorted. "Tell him all my problems, will I? Not bloody likely."

Beneath them the ground was like rough, uneven ice. A bitter wind picked up and swept through the area, rushing through their hair and between their fingers. His teeth chattered against each other, like the banging of a drum.

"It won't get its hooks in me," Spike declared.

It was clear he was yet to be infected by the hopelessness of this place.

"You've always been especially stupid, Spike," she said. "This place takes us all in time."

His vehement response was lost amongst the angry howling of unnatural winds. The winds unravelled Spike and he faded from this place as slowly and pointlessly as he had all the previous times.

Darla remained where she was.

 

Spike is not going to tell Angel. He's not afraid. He's not.


End file.
